Babies Online - The Blog

Wow, Lowe’s Really Does Have Everything.

Feel free to read the whole story, it’s a doozy. But here’s the summary – Steve Flaig, 22, was given up for adoption at birth. At 18, he started the investigation into who his biological mother was with the intention of attempting to meet her. Steve is a delivery driver at Lowe’s. After much searching, he finally discovers who his biological mother is. She’s the head cashier at Lowe’s. He’s been walking past her every day.

What are the odds of THAT? I guess I need to resurrect my faith in the state lottery and buy me a ticket.

Stories like this unearth an uneasiness that has bothered me ever since my wife and I decided to start the process of adopting a child from China. What if she wants to find her birth parents? It’s a likely scenario, frankly – and if I know myself as well as I do, I’m going to want to give this little girl every opportunity in the world at any cost. But what do I do when she asks for something as important as this – for some people, it aids in developing identity – and I know how unlikely it is that I can give it to her?

When we were accepted by our agency and put into the proverbial “queue” for a match via China, I started digging around online for information on this very subject. I stumbled across this staggeringly extensive blog post on the subject. Among all the amazing details and depth of information therein, the thing that stood out the most to me was that waiting 10-15 years to attempt to locate birth parents in China makes it virtually impossible to ever find them. The point is – adoptive parents basically need to anticipate the question and attempt to determine birth parents soon after they adopt and have the information in case the question comes up.

This really blew me away. So now I wrestle with the notion that if my little girl ever wants to know who her birth parents are – I need to do the research when she’s an infant on the remote chance I can find them. And if I do find them, I sit on this information until she asks? Do I give it to her if she doesn’t?

I can’t tell you how strange it is to love someone so unconditionally when I know she isn’t even yet conceived and she’s going to come from a country I’ve only seen on television. But I know I’m going to want to give her everything she wants – so I’m going to try and have my sluething hat on early to find her birth parents…just in case.

And hey, if I fail – I’ll just tell her to get a job at Lowe’s. They have everything.

Test

Posted by Michael on Thursday, December 20th, 2007 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Adoption, Current Events.
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